Russian special military operation in Ukraine #54

HIMARS costs a fraction of Bykov-class OPV and is much harder to hide than a ship which can just sail away back to it's home port

HIMARS is useless at patrolling fishery areas... it keeps sinking.

And if this is the first HIMARS that got taken out than Russian Army sucks some serious ass, they should be torching these by the trainloads by now

This is the first video they have chosen to release...

You are taking a piss out of this whole thing, are ya?

Why not. Your arguement is that the command of a fleet should be fired because then enemy had a few successful attacks.

When the **** in the history of the world has anyone fired the command structure of a region because of enemy attacks that are occasionally successful.

The Battle of Britain would be quite different if the air defence was fired and replaced completely every time a bomb or missile landed in London.

This thing got assblasted and sent to the bottom by bunch of RC boats without even know what hit it and you are making it sound like it went down fighting like USS Samuel B. Roberts or some such shit

This is what it looks like with small arms fire... when you get a successful hit a 300kg bomb goes up in your face... and by the way there are 11 more drones coming after this one.

Edit see Scorpious 's post above... I wont repeat it here.

Sink NATzO Ships and Kill NATzO Troops Now ASAP

I understand your anger, but with Nuland stepping down it sounds like the US is admitting defeat and that their goals of the destruction of Russia is no longer their driving ideology... I also suspect that the surprise Nuland was promising was the destruction of the Crimean bridge which she fixated on for so long... now the plans are exposed I think that is dead so she has nothing left so she is abandoning ship before the water level gets her shoes wet.

It also suggests a shift in western policy with US generals saying the Russian military should not be under estimated... and US papers publishing footage of Ukrainian war crimes... things are changing.

It's not Russia's goal to induce unnecessary suffering on the civilian population of Ukraine. Especially considering that Putin considers Russians and Ukrainians to be one people.

Ironic that the west don't care and are happy to use them as the head of the battering ram they are using to damage Russia...

I guess that a radical and effective solution would have been downing a NATO recon plane - as easy as that.
Without real time recon and targeting, and data retranslation, those drones will be useless.

I rather suspect the real solution will be RWS with thermals will be deployed even on the oldest Russian vessels with HMGs to deal with enemy drones at distances where they can't cause damage.

Jamming stations and even EW stations that detect their video links so they can be located easily and engaged early would be useful too.

This problem easily solved by Ship itself towing Logs behind it ! Drone can sit and wait by the Logs , without exploding ! Since no gaps , even around Tug boats , lateral Logs on Tug boats , protecting sides of Tug boats , etc ! Mind you , the drones or Machiavelli explode with frustrations . Logs can be joined tail to tail and dangle chains underneath them to capture submergibles !

Have you ever driven a car with a trailer?

Towing logs will just get tangled up and will become a serious pain in the arse... but more importantly why do you think a log floating in the water will stop a small speed boat that these drones essentially are? With water pump jet propulsion such a drone could skip over a log in the water and carry on to the target... a log will not stop them.

Others have been claimed destroyed in the past in the same fashion, but out of range for UAV surveillance. Tornado has a max 120km range, makes sense.

So the recent flurry of footage means that either the Ukrainians moved them closer to the front to make up for the rapidly diminishing tube artillery assets, or the Russians have gotten longer-ranged recon drones (well, they've had them, but UA AD has been a limiting factor), or it's a combination.

Odds are there will be footage of other kills they don't want to reveal because it will show Russian special forces operating behind enemy lines and might lead to the enemy trying to hunt them down based on the angles and perspective of the footage...

The Russian navy could really do with a lighter stabilised gun for lighter vessels, or even medium vessels with multiple installations, to counter these asymmetric threats such as these sea drones.
Reutech has a family of these, from 12.7mm heavy machine gun, up to 20mm cannon.

If you look at the video above you can see what they really need is NV optics, whether thermals or even active IR with IR spotlights... the ships are operating with running lights so it wont matter if they flash IR spotlights around the place to find things in the water with Digital night vision gear which is cheap and can be used day or night to spot targets and identify them.

Stabilised gun mounts would be nice of course too...

The pintle mounted hand fired 14.5mm does not cut the mustard in this environment.

It is actually effective with the right optics.

Russia has a range of RWS for armour being developed and deployed including 12.7mm HMG Kord and 14.5mm HMG Vladimirov, but also 23mm and 30mm cannon.

Some RPG-18s and other obsolete discardable rockets could be used up too.

A couple of SeaRogues per ship, even the lighter vessels, with 14.5mm instead of 12.7 or 20mm, would have saved all these vessels.

They just need thermals or digital night vision optics, but RWS would be better.

Am sure it won't be long until we see a Russian boomer being sunk while in port.

With Putin on board of course...

Russia is still fighting with one hand tied behind it's back. Very stupid. Ukraine still has functional airports, power, water,......

Even if this boat is sunk the Ukrainian military is retreating and collapsing and they still haven't passed the new laws for conscription, while the Russian Army is advancing and getting lots of high profile kills like Abrams and Abrams based vehicles we were told were invincible and would cut through Russian lines like a hot knife through butter.

In fact the Orcs claim to have shot down dozens of aircraft over the last few weeks too... they are getting more and more successful as they get closer and closer to defeat.

I see Zelenskys wife refused to go to an event for Biden because Navalnys wife will be there... Navalny was not the ideal western puppet because his views on the Ukraine are not much different from Putins... but it is pretty clear that Biden has chosen Navalnys widow over Zelenskys soon to be widow...

Why do you hate the Ukrainian civilian population so much? Personally, I have a lot of relatives stuck there - like many other Russians. Why do you think that we should want to kill our relatives because the Kiev neo-Nazi junta staged another PR campaign?

It is like saying all Brits and French people and Poles and Americans should all be murdered because of what their governments are doing to Russia and to plenty of other countries around the world.

Russia is not unique... the west does this to everyone... it is just Russia and Iran and Cuba and Vietnam and China and North Korea who stand up to them.

For those that defended this class, the egg is sliding off your faces

Being vulnerable to HATO attacks is not a bad feature of a patrol craft such as they are. That was never a mission for such vessels so it would be like saying the Yak-130 is a bad lead in fighter trainer jet aircraft because the Russian Air Force wont be able to use them to bomb Brussels.

But no, we still rolling with this

In a search and rescue role it is much faster than any helicopter could possibly be... would like to see them make A-40s to replace them.

Until we give money to the navy, the embarrassing show continues

And I don't blame the VMF by the way

Exactly.... they have not had the funding to say they are doing a bad job or are mismanaging what they have.

HATO on the other hand spends collectively well over 1 trillion US dollars a year on defence and they are struggling to make missiles and artillery shells... and the missiles they do make get shot down most of the time.

Or who continue to justify BE12 Laughing Laughing

Have fun patrolling for USV from a 1950s tourist plane

When they have money to pay for replacements I am sure they will be replaced quickly enough... until then the Be-12 is better than any helicopter for going out and rescuing ships at sea.

22160 rolls with a Torm2 strapped to its deck, where instead of that, it should have SAM built into the hull and an actual helicopter on the landing pad, not a land based SAM system as a back up measure because the class itself is a useless piece of shit

Yeah, there you misunderstand. The TOR system was tied down to the helicopter landing position because the helicopter landing position has tie down points for the helicopter in rough seas. After the testing when they learn what they want to learn about how a TOR system would work with other radar and ECM and ESM systems on the boat operating at the same time what they are going to do is not put a new TOR system to tie down on the helicopter landing spot for the ship to carry around with it.

Most likely new radar arrays (AESA) will be integrated into the ships mast to give full uninterrupted 360 degree view and optical systems mounted fore and aft and likely missile launch bins will be placed on the ships deck in various places that don't get in the way of the operation of the helicopter or anything else they will be having there and you will have TOR air defence protection and be able to operate your helicopter at the same time.

And by helicopter i don't mean shitty Ka27 which is useless, but an actual naval KA52 that can defend the ship from USV

Actually the Ka-27 is an excellent helicopter... more compact and powerful and much much cheaper than any western equivalent and with its coaxial rotor system much safer on a ships deck where a swinging tail rotor can be deadly.

For a patrol craft I would say the Ka-52 would be ridiculous... like mounting a PKM machine gun on a moped for traffic police.

The Ka-226 would be a much better match for a patrol craft like this.

You could fit a module with fuel and belted cannon ammo with stub wings for rocket pods and gatling guns to be mounted in such a way that the belted ammo can be in the cabin... perhaps with some sort of water cooling jacket for the guns so they can fire rather more rounds than they are able to without active cooling...

But we still roll with inadequate morons approving orders for such ships, and then strapping a tor to the deck instead of using the ship for what it was supposed to

That vessel was a meter maid caught up in a conflict it was never intended to fight. The west likely targeted it for that very reason.

The same reason they target bakeries and town market with their HIMARS... soft targets.

They are terrorists... we already knew that, why are some so surprised.

They are getting desperate so we should be expecting it and keep it in perspective but some are upset and I understand... but lashing out like a child is what the west would do...

A few seconds of feeling better and then realising the blood on your hands doesn't bring anything back or change anything.

The Ukrainians couldn't actually be any more careful in using their HIMARS - shooting off one round at a time so they can bug out ASAP, but its irrelevant. A truck simply isn't physically fast enough to get out of dodge. If fires, it dies. That's it.

Exactly... the orcs are not idiots and will fire rockets from a built up area and then drive straight into a building... if you weren't already watching them you would have no idea which building they just drone in to... you might guess, but wasting ammo on potentially civilian buildings is what they want you to do... they probably have fake hay stacks at the right time of the year they can throw over firing positions.

The Russians are good at camoflage and deception.... and the Ukrainians are Russians too.... we have seen BMPs and MTLBs in container trucks on their sides being smuggled to the front...

Do you think those trucks carry grain go back to the farms where the grain is grown empty?

The response to USV is a simple one

It's not a complex one at all

For new vessels of course... but having RWS all over a new ship is going to ruin its stealth characteristics... and of course it is the older ships like transports and patrol craft they are targeting... most vessels with Duet or AK630 mounts already have night vision and optical aiming and plenty of fire power to shred dozens of drones at a time.

But we have BE12 giving coastal tours of the Black Sea to tourists , we have an unarmed patrol dinghy with no weapons or helicopter, and shore based observation are a couple of broenkors on vacation

A shitfest

Now Russia is cutting itself off from the west and looks to trade with the rest of the world the money for the Navy will come and foreign trade will mostly pay for it all too.

The pirates that this ship was made to defend against

Those British drones are about 5 million pounds each so mounting an attack of 12 drones is actually more than most pirates can afford.

And HATO are known to be the best armed pirates anywhere.

Who the **** believed that an unarmed ship was gonna stop pirates that have anti ship missiles, Air defense missiles, ATGM, and all kinds of modern weapons?

Which pirates apart from HATO has antiship missiles? Which group of pirates apart from HATO has ever overwhelmed an armed ship?

And this is what they give to the VMF

It's an episode of grift of the highest order , the whole class should be used at sponges for USV

Graft is actually spending so much on every single boat in your navy claiming each one needs to be able to take on all of HATO on its own.

My argument is to the entire point of such a class of ships in the first place , none

And if a HIMARS hits a Russian police car is the problem that that police car was never designed to resist submunitions and that in the future all Police cars must be Armata based?

It is a patrol boat and for its designed mission it is just fine. It was specifically targeted by HATO because they knew it would be vulnerable to an attack most western destroyers would not be that OK defending against.

But they were ordered by the Navy for Anti-Piracy missions
to relieve the Udaloy class destroyers from that job.

They were an affordable patrol craft optimised for a job that it would be very suited to perform at a fraction of the costs that the Destroyers and Frigates they would otherwise be using could possibly manage.

It is like complaining that a pistol wont penetrate the best HATO body armour... well not all the people you arm need that level of performance... equipping everyone with .338 Lapua magnum sniper rifles is just not practical or affordable.

Only problem is, those pirates are rocking ASHM, MANPADS, medium range Air defenses, ATGM, and now long range drones

Bullshit.

Even the Houthies can't coordinate a 12 drone attack the way HATO can and the Houthies are not pirates and Russia has no problems with them.

The UK is watching its merchant shipping fleet get wrecked by those pirates that these ships are supposed to deter

That is right but the Houthies are not a pirate force.

I just want a well equipped VMF

A well equipped VMF needs patrol boats too.

Personally, I saw the clear work of the team working until the last minute.
The crew, I think, at a minimum, deserves not to be made into villains."

That is ridiculous, they did their jobs with the tools they had at hand and the lesson for the navy is that the tools they had were not sufficient to the problem.

All the little girls crying and trying to pin blame and extract even more damage from these cases should be ignored... they are the cowards.

You are being busy whining, crying, and yapping for so long, that there is hardly anyone considering you seriously.

I could only take him less seriously if he kept saying Putin is at fault and he should resign...

He has an agenda and every event he uses to claim the sky is falling so obviously you need to fire lots of people and make examples of them... because obviously Stalin was a better leader... that is what Russia needs...

Not to forget the Abrams being destroyed by a T-72 tank.

Don't be silly the superior Abrams would never let a T-72 get that close and would destroy every T-72 the Russians have... even with its upgrades it is barely a T-34...

In fact, in some way you could liken that to the awful track record the M1 has outside of US service. Export-cleared models that lack a lot, substandard crew training just kinda comes with it, and the lack of US-level logistical support also comes with it. You get the same result.

Would love to hear from western experts about how an expertly trained American Abrams crew would fight a drone that delivers an RPG-7 warhead into its roof...

Western Mercs who found conflict in Europe where the enemy controls the air and has artillery and knows how to use it is not the same as any conflict they have ever fought in before and I suspect American tankers would encounter the same problem in this theatre.

Ironically there are likely things Ukrainian tankers could probably teach HATO tankers right now... the ones still breathing anyway...

They don't need a complete overhaul, but the reality is that probably the overwhelming majority of the BSF's ships are not equipped to defend themselves from drone attacks like this, and this needs to be rectified.

If any other Navy fought in home waters (as opposed to the ships they would prefer to take to a conflict) would have most of the same problems or in fact worse problems.

The Russians are not stupid... in the early 1980s they started fitting HMGs and machine gun mounts on their ships when it was shown in the Falklands war that even concentrated small arms fire could put off attacking pilots doing dumb bomb runs.

You could not accuse the Russians of, say ignoring the potent power of sea skimming missiles and not massively upgrading their naval air defences as their opponents weapons and capacity increased over the years... cough cough. F-35 cough.

Ships need proper, stabilised close-in weapons systems guided by decent fire control systems that can acquire and destroy these targets at night (which is when all the successful attacks have happened AFAIK).

They do, but I would say a helicopter like a KA-26 with a module with ammo and fuel and stub wings with rocket pods and cannons would be the ultimate way of dealing with such attacks because it could destroy drones well away from the ships they are defending and deal with large numbers of drones where the wing mounted cannon pods could be loaded with thousands of rounds of ammo with all the night vision optics to find and kill the threats.

When not needed to stop drones it could be fitted with other modules like search and rescue and anti sub and even transport roles.

The 30 mm stabilized autocannon turret used in the BTR-82A.

And the IR laser used to illuminate at night would be just fine for use with digital night vision optics... active IR effectively... which would be very cheap but also very very effective.

I would think EW equipment that detects the video signal transmitted from the drones would also be useful in dealing with the problem.

The Russians already have aircraft pods with 12.7mm and 7.62mm gatling guns for helicopter use... adapting it so the ammo feeds reach into the helicopter so tens of thousands of rounds could be carried if needed in an anti drone module... the helicopter would be fast and mobile and hunt down drones perhaps going for other ships too.

Blessed are the Greek !

If it was aimed at Zelensky he would be dead...

The Greek leader and Zelensky are legitimate military targets.

They went to a combat zone to prove how brave they are so actually pretending they were under attack makes them look even braver.

And BTW... Zelensky is not the Messiah... he is just a naughty little boy.